


with up so floating many bells down

by York



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Epilogue, there's mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 07:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/York/pseuds/York
Summary: Grief changes, like seasons, but some things remain the same when you're a Lynch and you're goddamn stubborn.





	with up so floating many bells down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mamaw_mccall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamaw_mccall/gifts).



> a gift for Bee ([adamparrishey](http://adamparrishey.tumblr.com/)) for the [trc-exchange](https://trc-exchange.tumblr.com/)! prompts included pynch, getting snowed in at the Barns, and the Lynch brothers growing up together, so i thought i’d include bits of each. hoping your holidays are magical.
> 
> title from the poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by E. E. Cummings.

_winter_

 

They'd skipped Thanksgiving.

It was all decided independently, and all at once: Gansey declined the pomp formality of a congressional dinner, Blue declined the whirlwind choking hazard that was Calla cleaning and stuffing the turkey, Adam declined nothing, and Ronan said, "I, for one, am thankful we're not all fucking dead," and that was that.

That was November.

And the rest of the world kept turning around them.

That winter, Rockingham County saw its first snows unusually early. If you asked anyone in town about it, they'd all say the same thing: _ain't it kinda funny how it's all gone to shit? Weather's just now on the uptick._

Now it is December, and now Ronan stands in the kitchen at the Barns and looks out the wide bay windows into a sea of snow. It's as if the sky mourns Cabeswater by burying it: none of the lightness of powder and everything of icy slush, a bright white over-exposure gathering in uneven bouquets to rest at the foot of the hills.

It leaves Ronan wishing he could bring flowers for Cabeswater. Like he does for his mother's empty grave, like he does for his father's full grave, but he wouldn't know where to place a marker for the death of a forest. It's nowhere and everywhere, in their heads and their memories and their adventures, so Ronan figures that remembering it is homage enough.

But memories invite a muffled chill, like ghosts passing through bodies and the host can't help but feel what the trespasser feels. Using the space it has, for a moment, for a piece of parting empathy, gifted some borrowed life before it moves on again.

If there are any ghosts still floating about, Ronan's insides are all hollowed out, and they can do with him as they please.

Outside, everything is a searing white — Ronan turns away from the frostbitten window, and looks for his family.

"The roads are clear enough," Declan says when Ronan joins him again in the living room. There's a chafing; the wool of his bespoke slacks, subtle, as Declan slides his phone back into his pocket. "We should be able to make it to midnight Mass."

Ronan tilts his head; it's all the acknowledgement he gives. His attention is caught by Matthew and Opal fooling around by the back door, knocking the coat rack against the wall, and he doesn't take his eyes off them. Enough dents in the plaster have been spackled this week.

"You see Parrish today?" Declan tries for casual, picking imaginary lint off his sleeve, smoothing it down.

It's a landmine waiting to be stepped on, that question. Ronan imagines himself digging a trench and bunkering inside it. He replies evenly, "He had work. I'll see him tomorrow."

"On Christmas Eve?"

"On Christmas fucking Eve."

The pretense gets to Declan after a few seconds, and he sighs. "Look."

"Did I ask?"

"Come on, I didn't even —"

"I know what you're going to say."

" _What_ am I going to say?"

Ronan doesn't exactly know, but whatever it is, he also doesn't want to hear it. "Is this you giving your blessing?"

"You and I both know you don't need it." Declan pauses, and Ronan feels Declan looking at him, surveying no-man's-land, but Matthew and Opal have taken to a game of playing patty-cake with their hands. He isn't sure who is teaching it to who. "But you're not like you were after Dad."

_Like you were_ , Ronan considers. Spiraling as severely as he did after his father died — thieving cars, cutting off all his inherited hair, fighting with his brothers and getting an illegal tattoo, the local police force knowing him on a full-name, "Why, if it isn't _Ronan Lynch_ ," basis —

Just last weekend, he and Adam baked a shitty sort-of-birthday cake for Gansey, commemorating his Third Coming. They actually _baked_.

Maybe Declan is right.

Declan starts again, "Listen."

"No."

"Ronan —"

"What?" Ronan demands, even though he keeps interrupting on purpose.

Declan grips his keys tight within his pocket. They scrape against each other, grating and metallic, and if Ronan wasn't preoccupied with trying to look like an asshole he might've winced. "Promise me something," Declan says.

Something in his brother's voice catches Ronan's throat into silence. Finally, Ronan looks at him. His tone is malleable, bent to a waver, the usual steel of it stressed to its thinnest in a way that Ronan recognizes from experience, and there's something in his expression that isn't usually there — or, rather, something used to be there that has been stripped from it. He's used up what pretense he has left, Ronan thinks, somewhere along the way.

Maybe it was after the fifth frantic call placed to Ronan's cell phone when Matthew was being unmade in his care, when he thought moving the Lynches away from Henrietta would make them safe. Maybe it was taken from him, completely, the day they all stood at the cemetery together for the second time, an older mirror of the moment they shared another lifetime ago.

Ronan finally sees what's on Declan's face for what it is: sincerity.

"What happened with Greenmantle... and last month, with that _thing_." Declan runs a hand through his curly hair, exhaling roughly. "Don't leave dealing with it to just you and Parrish, or Gansey. We can't do that again. Promise me you're going to use your godforsaken phone, and _tell_ me when things get bad, because I'm tired, and I'm not planning any more funerals."

Distantly, Ronan thinks that _don't die_ is a hell of a shitty pep talk, but morbidly, he realizes that it's not a bad reminder.

Declan says again, "Promise me."

And _there_ — just like that, Declan sounds like himself again. The shaken ground beneath Ronan's feet seals, and he steadies.

"Okay. I promise," he says, and twists his leather bracelets farther up the inside of his sleeve. "Can I tell you to fuck off now?"

Declan loosely jabs Ronan's shoulder. "It's the holidays, you punk."

" _Auld lang_ fuck off," Ronan says, and leverages a retaliatory elbow into his brother's side, but he's biting down the grin that's curling his mouth, and he can tell that Declan is fighting one, too. It feels like a shift, a one-degree change in the frigid room, that immovable mountain of shit between them chiseling off a piece and turning to ash.

"Are you guys fighting?"

Matthew appears in front of them, a whiff out of breath.

"No," Ronan replies truthfully, but steps apart from Declan.

Pointing a thumb behind him towards the door, Matthew says, "The girl wants to go play in the snow."

"Her name is Opal, Matty," Ronan says, but she is nowhere in sight, and the coat rack is missing a parka. "Jesus, did she go out?"

Surprised, Matthew looks around. "Oh, yeah, I guess. She was saying something about wanting to make snow angels. Can I go too?"

Declan pulls back his sleeve and checks his watch. "Don't freeze to death. We leave in ten."

The resounding beam on Matthew's face lights up the room.

As Matthew looks over his shoulder with his bright eyes and bounds past the screen door to go outside, managing not to fall face-first down the back steps, it reminds Ronan of how the three brothers would sprint, racing, into the snow to go sledding at the first showing of the season. Jostling each other out of the doorway, eager to be the first one to claim the red sled, their favorite sled, until Niall pried them apart and bargained that they would take turns.

It's a childish memory, wearing the same cold flush across Matthew's face, beckoning into the night, asking to come out into the world, like a tripping hand backward, like a

 

_summer_

 

knock at the window.

Ronan turns his head to the sound.

What he sees makes him consider ignoring it altogether, but the knocking comes again, a precise _rap rap_ in the same way as before. He rolls his gaze away, eyes upward to the speckled off-white of his bedroom ceiling, intensely debating never moving again — when Adam shifts next to him and slides across the bed.

"Stay," Ronan says reflexively, reaching out for his leg, but Adam just crawls to the window and curls his hand around the latch. The frame swings open easily, its hinges fresh from Ronan's repairs.

Through the opening hops Chainsaw, having pecked on the panes (scratching up the glass, strike one) while clinging to the windowsill (clawing up the wood, strike two). Ronan stares at her, waiting for some verbalized penitence that will never come. She cocks her head back at him, then settles into the comforter at the foot of the bed, legs tucked under her in a mass of black puff.

"Voyeur," he tells her. She preens, shaking her tail feathers at him. Her indolence could count for another strike, but he's feeling generous tonight. Untamed, limitless.

"At least she was polite enough to wait," Adam says.

Adam is the reason for Ronan's good mood.

He's sitting with his back against the wall next to the window, head tipped back, lashes low, smiling at the exchange between dreamer and dream. He beckons Ronan to him with a tap to his thigh.

Ronan goes; lands in his lap, facing towards him at an angle. Adam's hands go to hold him; one in his bristly hair, grown a little longer than the usual short crop, and the other resting gently on his chest.

It's a night like any other together, and a night like none before. Ronan breathes, and the breeze from the open window trails forgivingly across his skin, swirling into the second story of the farmhouse. Summers at the Barns are long with dripping heat, though the nights are calm with reprieving winds, carrying runoff into the dark and eroding the standstill of the day.

They are quiet for a few minutes, blissful ones, Adam trading time with his fingers scratching over Ronan's scalp and tracing over his face — running a line over his brow, delicately hovering over his closed eyelids, catching the corner of his mouth, brushing the bridge of his nose. Adam is always doing something with his hands. He's tactile, touchy, and Ronan holds himself as still as he can, taking moments like these with reverence.

Too soon, Adam withdraws his hands, and moves to close the open window.

Ronan says, "No, leave it." He stays Adam's hand by reaching up and touching two fingers to his wrist. The fresh air, though warm and humid and tacky, feels nice on his flushed face. "She'll stink up the place," he says, and eyes Chainsaw warily. She doesn't seem to notice the offense — eyes closed, wings tight to her body, affecting sleep with every bit of her posture.

"If you fixed the air conditioning, we wouldn't need every window open," Adam says.

"Tomorrow," Ronan promises. "It's only a filter change."

Adam makes a dubious grunt, settling back, and starts another pattern over Ronan's skin. "You're so sweaty."

" _You're_ sweaty," Ronan says, and goes to remove Adam's hand from his chest, but their fingers end up intertwined together over his heart, hanging in the air.

Pressing fingertips to fingertips, thumb rubbing across skin, Ronan idly plays with Adam's fingers as if attending to a practiced hobby. He's careful, pausing at every detail: bones jutting, skin soft, tendons relaxed and pliable for Ronan to explore the lines of his palm and the bend of his fingers.

Adam smiles down at their joined hands. His eyes are unfocused, looking both at and through Ronan, watching the way his own hand is turned about freely. It's a familiar and faraway gaze. Whenever Ronan catches Adam looking at him, it's usually like this: his mind too busy with working out some unsolved riddle, too distracted to tell his eyes to cling to a single thing. Lost in thought.

Ronan waits for him to gather what it is he wants to say. The night could go on forever for all he cares — he could spend endless nights sequestered like this, just the two of them.

After a minute, Adam takes Ronan's hand in both of his and clasps them together. "What was that... what were you singing to Opal? Earlier."

It takes a moment for Ronan to remember. He adjusts himself so the knob of his skull is atop Adam's thigh, and looks up towards the moonlit shadows on Adam's face. "Singing?"

"Tonight, when you were putting her to bed. I heard you from the hall." He pauses to look up at the ceiling in thought. "Humming, or singing. I think there were words."

Ronan feels the urge to turn and bury his face into Adam's stomach. Adam had heard that? A flush crawls across Ronan's face.

He knows what it was: a lullaby Ronan had learned years and years ago. A touch of soothing Irish, mostly English, and best sung from parents to their children. "I couldn't remember all the words," Ronan admits quietly. "Mom made it up, I think, or it's really fucking old. She used to sing it to Matthew when he couldn't sleep."

"That's —"

"Shut up."

"— the sweetest thing I've ever heard."

Ronan throws his forearm over his face. "She's been having nightmares again. It helped with Matthew when he was a kid, so I thought..."

"Oh," Adam says, and his voice is small. He lifts Ronan's arm away from his face, and when Ronan opens his eyes again, Adam's face is furrowed with concern. "Is she all right now?"

"Maybe, but she's full of shit and wouldn't tell me anything else. She passed out, at least. That's something."

It seems to be enough for Adam, though Ronan has resolved to wake up early in the morning to check on Opal. To make sure she hasn't eaten through any pillows, or kicked a hole in any furniture.

Shifting into a deeper slouch, Adam begins tapping the bedspread to a beat. "How does it go? The song, it was something like..."

He must remember more than he initially led on, because he starts humming the first bar, and then the second, but the rhythm is off. If he had the words, he would be close.

Ronan cuts him off, "No, it's more —"

Before Ronan can recite any of the lyrics, or even make another sound, a very clear and astoundingly on-pitch croak comes from the foot of the bed and makes them both jump.

Chainsaw is tilting her head at them at an odd angle, her eyes slitted narrow and feathers ruffled on the back of her neck. She looks unamused to be either woken from slumber or forgotten about entirely and is voicing her strong opinion on the matter. Then, using noises that should only belong in dreams, she eerily copycats Adam's attempt at the lullaby with a low whistle. When she finishes, Adam bursts out laughing and it's the most welcoming noise, a sorely needed sound that Ronan sometimes wishes he could capture.

Ronan says to Chainsaw fondly, "I am so proud of you, Birdbrain."

Adam wipes his eye. "Oh my God, encore."

" _No_ ," Ronan says, and Adam shakes with more laughter.

Chainsaw lets out a last _brek_ that sounds suspiciously close to a swear, and hunkers down once more, concert concluded. Ronan can't believe he got so lucky with her.

Adam's laughter fades into a sigh, and he moves his hand, long-fingered and fine-boned, to rest again on Ronan's cheek. Adam's thumb brushes lightly on his skin, tickling against Ronan's eyelashes, and they flutter shut.

"I love you," Adam says.

It isn't the first time he's said it. Ronan's heart seizes like it is.

But he keeps his eyes closed, because it's been said over breakfast, when Ronan made strawberry pancakes with whipped cream after Adam had a double shift. It's been said on the roof of the far barn while gazing at the stars. It's been said under blankets on the couch, as an automatic afterthought when Adam was half asleep, like it was as simple and easy as a _goodnight_.

Ronan's said it back in just as many ways: dropping Adam off at school and following it with a kiss; after being shaken from a nightmare; in the hallway after they've turned out all the lights, and Adam will stay the night, and fireflies from Ronan's dreams illuminate their faces, and Adam asks, "What are you looking at me like that for?"

So Ronan's mouth lifts, because he knows it won't be the last time. Breathes in and out, because it still takes his breath away, turns his face into Adam's palm, because he'll say it back as many times as Adam will let him, over and over again, puts Adam's fingers to his mouth, because

 

_winter_

 

gusts of a leftover summer land on the Barns that Christmas and burn the snow to cinders.

Leaves of evergreens hold on to their branches, steadfast and verdant, enduring throughout the year. Ice chips and cracks down the driveway, the fields poking budding green blades through the brush with not a speck of white in sight — only the desaturated greenery and the warm brown of hibernation.

The kitchen window overlooks a land of floating dew, the glass casting blooming light through fogged-up edges into the room. Adam stands there in the diffuse rays, looking out into the fields, fingers clasped around his college-crested mug. He looks like something out of a dream, and brings his cup of coffee to his lips.

Before he can take a sip, Ronan wraps his arms around his waist.

"There you are," Ronan says into his neck. "Jesus, how much coffee do you need? Brewing a pot for the whole county?"

Adam doesn't startle from the swaying hug. "You know, I thought we could try caffeine on the sleeping cows."

Ronan hums. "Not a bad idea. C'mon, I want to show you something. Come here." Ronan walks them forward with his knees, stopping when they're in the doorway.

"What?" Adam complains. "I want my coffee."

Despite his protests, Ronan takes the cup from his hands and sets it on the counter. "Look up," he tells Adam.

He looks, and above them, taped to the wooden frame and wrapped in a dazzling red ribbon, is a sprig of mistletoe.

Slowly, one side of Adam's mouth curls up, and he lowers his eyes back down to Ronan's. "Is that... really?" He glances down at Ronan's mouth before quickly blinking back up, a split-second slip of intent. Bundles of nerves, unexpected, branch out anxiously around Ronan's stomach, as if his carefully crafted plan could be undone just by Adam looking at him like that.

" _Phoradendron_ ," Ronan says. "Its Greek name is _tree thief_."

Like a clock tower's bell marking the dawn, Adam laughs. It startles Ronan into grinning back at him, and suddenly he no longer worries, no longer thinks himself stupid for stringing up some parasitic plant in an archway. He's about to lean in when Adam does it for the both of them, taking Ronan by the back of the neck and kissing him.

"God, Ronan," he says when he pulls back, wrapping his arms around Ronan's shoulders, and he buries his face into his chest. Ronan rubs a hand up and down his back, over his soft sweater, and hugs him back.

Even without snow, the morning settles into a bright white feeling that Ronan knows is close enough to joy.

From the living room projects a jolly tune: a Christmas carol on vinyl that's slightly off, very liberated, probably dreamt, with lyrics like _dashing through the snow, get the fuck out of my way_. Matthew's gleeful laugh follows the recognition of its words, and the sound of Gansey chattering away about something to Blue fills in the rest of the gaps.

Ronan could hold on to Adam for much longer, but he keeps it short, because there is an audience in the other room and he doesn't want there to be an official petition against PDA.

He puts enough space between them to give Adam an appreciative once-over. "You look good in that," he says.

"This dream sweater? With the — this one deer has six legs." Adam points to it, a single anomaly in the line of dancing hooves ringing around his middle, stitched in snow-white against red.

Ronan insists, " _Reindeer_. They're reindeer, and the more legs the merrier."

It fits him snugly, designed by Ronan's dreams, with long sleeves that stretch past his thumbs for warmth, collar tucked at the base of his neck if he wants to duck his nose into it, fabric sculpted around his chest for — well, that's just for Ronan's benefit.

He gave it to Adam that morning as an early gift, so he could wear it throughout the day. Ronan thinks it's a job well done, all around.

"It's very... festive," Adam ventures.

"Yeah, you know, don we now our gay apparel or whatever," Ronan says. He's pretending to inspect the incomprehensible snowflake pattern, but he made them spiral that way on purpose for fun, and his fingers just want to press to Adam's stomach.

It's a ruse too easy to see through, bringing a smirk onto Adam's face, and he says, "I can't believe you dreamt an ugly Christmas sweater."

Ronan feigns offense. "Call it ugly one more time and I'm taking it back."

"Take it back _where_ ," Adam half-laughs, but instead of waiting for an answer, kisses Ronan against twin smiles. It's with no rush, nothing at their heels, just the stillness of the wintry air hazed with heat from the living room hearth.

Adam lingers before pulling away, soft and light, and Ronan squeezes his sides. When Adam looks down, he's finally distracted. "Is that mine?" he asks, accusingly, prodding at Ronan's pullover sweatshirt.

Ronan can't help his grin. "Took you long enough to notice."

"Are you going to steal _all_ of my college ones?"

"You'll get them back, Parrish. I'm good for it."

"Uh-huh." But Ronan can tell he is unbothered, maybe charmed if he's going for self-flattery, and he leans into Adam again in the doorway.

_A lot has changed from a year ago,_ he wants to say, but the whole world is saying it for him: the quiet skies, the breathing ground, the way the fire crackles over wood and spits embering flecks up the chimney, the unlikely family of friends in the other room, laughing over steaming drinks and under neverending blankets. Adam is in his kitchen on Christmas morning, and his brothers are together in their home, and Ronan's heart creaks pleasantly, settling into the floorboards of his veins, into the roofed beams of his ribs.

"Love you," Ronan murmurs, forehead pressed to Adam's. It surprises him, how his stomach still turns when he says the words out loud, how he's not sure if that upside-down feeling will ever go away.

Adam hums and noses against his cheek. "Yeah," he says. "Love you too."

A cough startles them some inches apart, and they both blink. Declan is hovering awkwardly by the entryway, wearing a decidedly un-festive button-down and an expression that remembers how to be merry but presently chooses not to be. He says, "We're about to start opening stockings. Matthew said he gets yours if you miss it."

Ronan decides he doesn't care what the scene in the kitchen looks like — instead of holding on to Adam's sides, he takes Adam's hands in his own. He tells Declan, "I can't believe you did _stockings_."

True to dismissive form, Declan rolls his eyes and heads back around the corner. "They were Ashley's idea," he says, but Ronan knows immediately that it's a lie — he knows because it was always Declan's favorite part of Christmas morning. Niall's stocking stuffers were cherished, collected from abroad excursions, from dreams, taken from quiet sleep that held no danger. Ronan liked that part well enough. He liked sitting on his father's knee as a young and curly-haired kid, parceling the tissue paper apart like he had clawed paws until the socks were emptied.

Matthew's cares were always more larger than life, adoring the search itself, figuring out which presents were his. Every year, to his delight, the largest box was always addressed to him.

Above all, though, Ronan himself loved the afternoon of it the most: when the promise of the long day stretched past the early morning, after the festivities wound away and the wrappings were collected, the rest could be spent playing, revelling in the spoils, in the company of rowdy brothers while his parents watched over them.

Ronan feels like they still are, in a way.

He looks forward to the day.

Adam has taken his coffee to his chest again, and lingers under the mistletoe. "Come on," Adam says, and looks back over his shoulder. "We're going to miss stockings."


End file.
